- 6 hours ago
Counting & Betting Techniques
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00:03You're gonna change my world
00:07You're gonna heal my world
00:11You're gonna feel my world
00:14And make it all a little better
00:18And every song sings true
00:23And every tongue speaks kind
00:27And every song sings good
00:30Just like a bigger piece of mind
00:32You suppose there's nothing much a meager man can do
00:38Bear his hairy chest and hold his morning breath
00:41Sting his thumbs into the screws
00:43Curse the dusty bellabusterers in riot gear
00:47While he bellows like a cranky bowl to anyone here
00:51You're gonna change my world
00:54You're gonna raise that cane
00:57Till every break's possible
01:01And every song's and love's a table
01:22When blackjack was first discovered to be beatable by Ed Thorpe in the 60s
01:29It was just a small time game that was offered a couple of tables in downtown Las Vegas
01:33It was really not a major money generator for anybody
01:36The fact that it's known to be beatable
01:38Is what's responsible for this multi-billion dollar industry
01:41And at the higher levels the casinos are aware of this
01:44So they're not going to take the game away
01:46They could have taken it away at any time
01:48They could have just offered roulette instead
01:51People play and people lose money because they know it can be beat
01:54But they don't make it easy because they don't want too many people beating it
01:57I'm actually maybe gonna take a little aside now
02:00And do a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of math
02:04If you guys are all right to that
02:07Maybe on the whiteboard
02:10Because I want to talk about what it means to have an expectation of
02:14Half a percent or two percent or whatever
02:16What does it really mean?
02:18Because when you play a hand of blackjack
02:23I mean you either win or lose the whole thing, right?
02:26Sometimes you win or lose double
02:27When you double down or split
02:29Sometimes it's four times the amount
02:31The standard deviation on the hand of blackjack is 1.1
02:34The amount that you're betting
02:36Okay?
02:38Meaning it's a little bit more because sometimes you double
02:43So when you play one hand
02:45And you have a one percent advantage
02:48Because the true count is three
02:49After the offset it's two
02:50And then it's a one percent advantage
02:54Incidentally, when you do this card counting game
02:55And you vary your bet a lot
02:57And sometimes you have a big advantage
02:58Sometimes you play on cable minimum
02:59And you have a disadvantage
03:01In aggregate, if you do a weighted average
03:03By the amount that you're betting at each time
03:06With good rules
03:07Or decent rules
03:09You're gonna end up at about a one percent advantage
03:10Overall
03:11Like the average advantage of all the money you bet
03:14You know, sometimes you have a three percent advantage
03:16And you're betting a giant amount of money
03:17And sometimes, you know, most of the time
03:18You have a half a percent disadvantage
03:20And you're betting the minimum
03:21Average it out
03:21It's gonna approach one percent
03:23You know, one percent is actually really good
03:25Like with a small minimum
03:27Or if you're doing some back counting
03:28Sometimes, you know
03:29You're not playing at all when it's negative
03:31You're gonna get to one percent
03:33If you have a high minimum
03:34You're gonna have trouble getting past like a half percent advantage
03:38But if you're playing a strong counting game
03:39Of any kind of call-in game
03:41Call-in game meaning
03:42You have people betting really small minimums here
03:44And they're calling their buddy in
03:46Who is the big player
03:47That's what we usually like to do
03:48So that your spread
03:50Your difference between your minimum
03:51And your maximum is much bigger
03:53So essentially there's no minimum
03:54Now if you have a five hundred dollar unit
03:56And you're playing a twenty-five dollar minimum
03:57It's the same as playing a zero minimum
03:59It's just noise in your bankroll
04:00You know, if you have a half a million dollar bankroll
04:02You know, twenty-five dollars is nothing
04:05So if you're able to do that
04:07You're more likely to be playing at least a one percent
04:10Maybe even a one and a half percent advantage game
04:13Meaning the average advantage of all the money you put out
04:15So let's
04:16I'm gonna go to the whiteboard a little bit
04:17And talk about what you might expect
04:21Let's talk about the long term
04:22In terms of the number of hands that you play
04:30So
04:32With one hand
04:33And let's say that you're betting a hundred dollars
04:37Is your average bet
04:38Okay, because you know
04:40You're playing twenty-five dollar minimums
04:41About fifty dollar units
04:42And your average bet is about a hundred bucks
04:44And your average advantage is gonna be one percent
04:47So when you play one hand
04:51Your expected value
04:53Which is your expectation
04:55Is going to be
04:57A dollar
04:58A dollar
05:00So this is number of hands
05:03Okay
05:08One percent
05:12Average advantage
05:14Okay
05:15You play a hand
05:16And
05:17You expect to make a dollar
05:18But what is your standard deviation?
05:25Standard deviation
05:27Standard deviation
05:27Standard deviation is like
05:28That's the plus or minus
05:29You know
05:30Anytime you get
05:31An expectation
05:32Like
05:32Right now
05:34By doing a poll of a thousand voters
05:36They expect that
05:38You know
05:38Bush is gonna get forty-eight percent of the vote
05:41Plus or minus three percent
05:43They always have a plus or minus
05:44You know
05:45Because they're only polling thousand voters
05:47And there's fifty million voters
05:48Or whatever
05:48A hundred million voters
05:49And so there's always some plus or minus factor
05:51That's the standard deviation
05:53Sometimes the plus or minus
05:55They give you in a poll
05:55Is two standard deviations
05:58So
05:59The standard deviation
06:00On a hand of blackjack
06:00Is one point one times the bet
06:02So it's a hundred and ten dollars
06:04Okay
06:05So it's about a hundred bucks
06:07And intuitively
06:07It makes sense
06:08Because you usually
06:09Win or lose
06:10That amount
06:14Now let's say you play
06:15A hundred hands
06:19You know
06:19You've played for an hour and a half
06:21Maybe an hour heads up
06:23Or two hours at the full table
06:25And you've played a hundred hands
06:27Let's do the expectation of standard deviation
06:32How much do you expect to win?
06:33If you average the end is one percent
06:34And you're betting a hundred dollars a hand
06:36For a hundred hands?
06:39A hundred
06:39A hundred dollars
06:41Now you expect to make a hundred dollars
06:43But can any of you figure out
06:45Approximately
06:45What the standard deviation is
06:47After a hundred hands of blackjack?
06:48The standard deviation
06:51In any kind of process like blackjack
06:53Or any other large independence events
06:55Rises as the square root of the number of trials
06:58So you simply take the square root of this number of hundred hands
07:01Which is ten
07:02Times this original standard deviation
07:03And so it's eleven hundred
07:05Or let's just call it a thousand approximately
07:07Call it one k
07:09So what does it mean?
07:10After an hour and a half of playing blackjack
07:13Varying your count
07:13Knowing that you have a one percent advantage
07:15Knowing for sure
07:16You know
07:16Trusting in yourself
07:17Trusting in your simulations
07:19You think you've made a hundred bucks
07:20But in fact you've at least won or lost a thousand
07:24So could you tell that you're playing a good game based on your results?
07:29What can you conclude based on your results?
07:30Let's say you played for an hour and a half and you lost fifteen hundred dollars
07:33Does that mean that you're not playing correctly?
07:36Or the casino is cheating?
07:38It doesn't mean anything
07:39It doesn't mean anything because it's about the standard deviation
07:43So unfortunately at this level
07:44This is total noise still
07:46Your expectation is very small compared to standard deviation
07:49And your results are indistinguishable from luck
07:53There's nothing that you can do in a couple of hours
07:56That will guarantee that you're going to win
07:59And so
08:01You should never look at your results after a couple of hours
08:03And try to draw any conclusion based on your results
08:06But
08:06If you instead of playing for a couple of hours
08:08You play for a long weekend
08:11Okay
08:11And you play ten thousand hands
08:15Okay
08:16No, that's quite a long weekend
08:18Yeah
08:20Let's make
08:22Five hundred percent
08:23Well then you have
08:23I'm just doing like easy square roots
08:25Because I want to get to the long term here real quickly
08:26But you can extrapolate
08:27You just take the square root of this number
08:29And you multiply by that number
08:31And you get the standard deviation
08:32So ten thousand hands
08:33A dollar a hand
08:34You expect to win ten thousand dollars
08:37Plus or minus ten thousand dollars
08:42Okay
08:42Okay
08:42So now you're getting to the point where
08:43At least you can
08:44You can sense it
08:45Maybe it's a couple of months of play
08:47Whatever
08:47Well ideally
08:48You have
08:48You pool your bankroll with some other people
08:51And then you get to these large numbers of hands
08:52Much quicker obviously
08:53Because
08:54You get to all play to the same bankroll
08:57And
08:58Now
08:59You know
09:00It's still random
09:01You can still lose money pretty easily
09:03But
09:05It's much more predictable
09:06And so
09:07But what does it mean
09:08To have one standard deviation of ten thousand dollars
09:09It turns out that there's an exact relationship
09:12In terms of probabilities
09:14In any kind of
09:16Uniform
09:18Distribution
09:18Low of large numbers states
09:20That this probability
09:21Of being
09:23Within
09:23One standard deviation of the expectation
09:25Is about two thirds
09:28So you have about a two thirds chance
09:31Of
09:31Of being
09:32Between
09:33Zero and twenty thousand dollars ahead
09:35In this scenario
09:37And you have a one third chance of being outside of that range
09:39Meaning you only have a one sixth chance
09:42A one
09:42Maybe a sixteen percent chance
09:44Of being down
09:45More than a whole standard deviation
09:49So
09:49What
09:49What that says
09:50Is that after
09:50A few weeks of play
09:52And ten thousand hands have been played
09:53Or maybe a weekend if you do have a group of people
09:56You actually
09:57Only have a
09:58One and six
09:59A roll of the die
10:00A chance of being down
10:03Because
10:03You have to be a full standard deviation
10:05Below the expectation
10:06Before you are at zero
10:07So you have a one and six chance of being negative
10:09One and six chance of being up more than twenty K
10:12And a two thirds chance of being between zero and twenty K
10:16At this level
10:17You have
10:18You start to have some sense
10:19Of the fact that you're making money
10:21Based on your result
10:22But it's not a very definite sense
10:24Because you could still easily be down
10:25But
10:26You know zooming way ahead
10:27To a couple of years of play
10:29This is where you want to end up being
10:30At a million hands
10:32You expect to make a million dollars
10:35Right
10:36A dollar a hand a hundred
10:38A million bucks
10:39Because by the time you play a million hands
10:40Hopefully your bankroll
10:41Is going to be bigger
10:42Again it's going to be
10:42Much more than a hundred along the way
10:44But
10:44You know if it stays at that level
10:46And if
10:47Your percentage advantage stays at one percent
10:49You're going to expect to make a million dollars
10:52And this is only a hundred thousand
10:53Plus or minus
10:57Because it's the square root of a million
10:59That's one thousand
10:59Times the original
11:00Hundred dollars
11:01That's a hundred thousand
11:03Well guess what
11:04There's no more luck
11:05Luck is gone
11:06You expect to make a million dollars
11:08Plus or minus a hundred thousand
11:09You might make eight hundred and fifty
11:11You might make one point two
11:13But you're never going to make four hundred
11:15Never
11:15Never at all
11:18You've gotten to the long term
11:20And in fact you've gotten to the long term
11:21Somewhere in between
11:22These two levels
11:23Like here you're well beyond
11:25You're clearly obviously
11:26Totally in the long term
11:27You're absolutely certain of making money
11:28And in fact
11:29You're absolutely certain of approximately
11:30How much money you're going to make
11:32You know
11:33You know that
11:33If you have
11:35A five hundred thousand dollar win
11:36You know that something is wrong
11:38You weren't playing the game
11:39You thought you were playing
11:39Something went terribly wrong
11:41You know
11:41You know
11:41You can actually conclude that
11:43Based on you won being too small
11:47So that's
11:48That's
11:49Sort of objectifying
11:50And explaining
11:51In terms of numbers
11:52What the long term means
11:54And keep it in mind
11:55When you have a frustrating result
11:57And you haven't won
11:58What you think you should have
11:59Or if you have a very good result
12:00Before you get all excited
12:01About what a great amazing player you are
12:03You know
12:04Keep in mind
12:06Just what your standard deviation might be
12:07Try to estimate
12:08Try to guess the number of hands you play
12:10Yeah very approximately
12:11You can tell
12:11You know if you are playing
12:13Thirty hands an hour
12:14Or a hundred hands an hour
12:15Because you can tell
12:15What kind of game you are playing
12:16How crowded it is
12:17And how fast they are
12:18There is software that you can run on a PC
12:21Casino Verita
12:22It's on the order of a hundred
12:23If you buy all the modules
12:24It's like maybe two hundred dollars
12:25At the most
12:27But you buy the software
12:29And you run it on your computer
12:30And it says
12:31All those things you just told me
12:32You plug it right in
12:33It says how many decks
12:34How many players
12:34What kind of rules
12:35You plug it right in
12:37And it spits out
12:37Expectation standard deviation
12:41Okay I'm going to start by talking about
12:43The basic card counting techniques
12:45That have been used since the 1960s
12:48By professional card counters
12:49And were somewhat perfected
12:51By the MIT team
12:52Later I'll talk about
12:53The more advanced techniques
12:54That we developed
12:55Just for ourselves
12:56The basic notion of card counting
12:59Realize on the fact that certain cards
13:00In particular 10s and aces
13:02The high cards in the shoe
13:03Help the player a little bit more
13:05Than they help the dealer
13:06Now in some situations
13:07A 10 of an ace
13:08Can help the dealer as well
13:09I mean if the dealer gets blackjack
13:11You're going to lose
13:12But
13:12When a player gets blackjack
13:14You get one and a half to one
13:16Odds
13:16On your winnings
13:17And when a dealer gets blackjack
13:19You just lose your money
13:20And so
13:20If there are more blackjacks in general
13:22For both the player and the dealer
13:24You're going to end up doing better
13:25You're going to end up winning
13:26Because you get the extra half a bet
13:28Every time you get a blackjack
13:29That the dealer doesn't get
13:30When you lose a bet
13:34We have to begin by playing basic strategy
13:36Basic strategy simply means that
13:38For every combination of your two cards
13:40And the dealer's up card
13:41You make the correct decision
13:43And there's a chart
13:45That tells you how to play
13:47For any particular combination of hands
13:49So for instance if you have
13:50A 12 against a dealer 3
13:53You're going to hit that hand
13:54And if you had a 12 against a dealer 4
13:56You look it up on the chart
13:57And you're going to stand it
13:58And this chart is the same
14:00At this point in most books that you get
14:03I mean it's a well known piece of information
14:04That was derived
14:05By running billions and billions of hands
14:07On computer simulations
14:09Playing exact basic strategy
14:11Will actually lower the casino advantage
14:13To a fraction of a percent
14:15To about half a percent or so
14:17Whereas if you are an average player
14:19The casino might have a 3 or 4 percent advantage
14:21Against you
14:22Just playing this chart accurately
14:23Memorizing this chart
14:24And always playing it perfectly
14:25Will cut that down to a fraction of a percent
14:27And then the card counting
14:29Will take you to that next level
14:31And actually give you a fraction of a percent advantage
14:33Over the casino
14:34So let's begin by just playing a couple of hands
14:38And playing basic strategy
14:42So here we go
14:43So that's the example I just said
14:4512 against a 2
14:46Look it up
14:47And it says hit
14:49So you take a card and bust
14:51A pair of 6s against a 2
14:52Look it up
14:54And it says split your 6s
14:57Against everything up to a 6
14:59You're going to be more likely to
15:01Split hands
15:02To double hands
15:03And to stand hands
15:04Against little cards
15:06Because when a dealer has a little card up
15:08He's more likely to bust
15:09There are 4 different kinds of 10s in the deck
15:12So the most likely card he may have underneath
15:14Is a 10
15:15So you're sort of counting
15:16Having a 10 underneath
15:18And maybe busting with a 10
15:19And thinking that
15:19He has a higher chance of busting this
15:21Than if he had a 7, 8, 9, 10
15:23And so
15:25That's why you end up
15:26Putting extra money out
15:27Splitting these 6s
15:3016
15:30You're going to stand
15:31By the same logic
15:32And another 16
15:35And the dealer has 13
15:37Too many
15:37See the bust
15:39Very once
15:45So let's play 2 hands again
15:51So now we have a 13 against a 9
15:53A 13 is one of these stiff hands
15:55And with the stiff hands
15:56You generally hit them against the high cards
15:58And stand them against the low cards
16:00And just to double check
16:01Because it's very important to get it perfect
16:02It's one of these things where
16:04If you're playing 95% of it correctly
16:06But occasionally make a mistake
16:07You're actually going to lose quite a bit of money
16:09Before you can use that small effect of card counting
16:13You have to have absolutely perfect basic strategy
16:15It's not enough to know almost all of it
16:17You have to get every bit of it right
16:19And you can get it printed out in a little card
16:21And even take it out of the table
16:22It's like completely fine
16:24Just don't buy the little card in a casino gift shop
16:26Because it's going to be almost correct
16:28And there's going to be one or two mistakes on it typically
16:32So 13 against a 9
16:33We're going to hit that and bust
16:37See now it's got 12, 15, too many
16:39And it's got once
16:41So it's very straight forward
16:46And that's how it goes with basic
16:47You just have to keep doing it
16:49No matter what kind of blackjack strategy you're employing
16:52Whether you're counting cards
16:53And doing one of our advanced techniques
16:54You're always playing basic strategy
16:56As your absolute basis
16:57You have to memorize this chart called
17:02The advantage that the counting gives you is a second order effect
17:04In the first order
17:06For the first approximation
17:08The extra tens of nations give the dealer more blackjack also
17:13So it's only because when you get the blackjack
17:15You get one and a half times your bet
17:17Whereas when the dealer gets a blackjack
17:19You only lose one time your bet
17:20You know that's actually close to half of the advantage right there
17:23But let's try just a little bit of playing
17:25So like throw out a chip or whatever
17:26You can say these are hundred dollar chips
17:28You want to just sort of each play a hand
17:30To start
17:32Now
17:39So we're going to try doing a high-low count
17:41You know some of you guys do different or more advanced counts
17:45And that's fine
17:45Just you can stick with your own
17:47But we're going to just we're going to do the high-low here
17:50And the way that the high-low works is that
17:522, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are plus 1
17:57Okay
17:58And tens of nations are minus 1
17:59You start at 0
18:00The little card is defined as 2 for 6
18:02And the tens of nations are the good cards
18:04So
18:05And so you add
18:06When you count you actually add one for the little ones
18:07And then you subtract one for the tens of nations
18:10The reason being that when the little cards come out
18:13It means that there's extra tens of nations left
18:15And so it's good
18:16So you call it positive
18:17So when you see a big card like that
18:19You say minus
18:20It started at 0 so now it's minus 1
18:22Right
18:22And you just do a running count as ideal
18:24If you're a beginner counter
18:26It's really important to actually
18:28Mentally sort of say the count to yourself
18:30With every hand played
18:31Because the dealer is going to announce totals
18:32They're going to say
18:3411 doubling down 16
18:36So
18:36It's very easy to go to 6 instead of 5
18:38Because it sounds like 16 or something
18:40So you have to really say
18:41Look the count is 5 and I have a 16
18:42And you need to be aware
18:43One thing that people who are learning to count often do
18:46Is they stop adding up the totals
18:48They're so busy counting
18:49That they expect the dealer to keep the totals for them
18:52And to sort of play their hands for them
18:53And the dealers are always very happy to play a hand for them
18:55With almost correct basic strategy
18:57Because that's what the dealers know
18:58They know almost correct basic strategy
19:00But it turns out
19:01That those couple of basic strategy mistakes
19:04Totally eat away whatever advantage you get by counting
19:06You know
19:07The basic is first
19:08You have to play perfect basic essentially
19:09You can make only one mistake every 20 shoes
19:12That's about it
19:13You really can't make basic mistakes very often
19:17There are different ways of doing it
19:19Practically different ways of doing it
19:20For example
19:21You could try to count as ideal each card
19:24So it's plus 3
19:25You can do
19:253
19:264
19:283
19:29Let's clean it up
19:314
19:323
19:332
19:343
19:352
19:361
19:370
19:370
19:381
19:39So that's one way of doing it
19:40Okay
19:42Another way of doing it
19:43Would have been
19:44To look away from the table
19:45While they're dealing
19:45Because you're always staring at the cards in the same way
19:47You know
19:47It's going to be pretty blatant
19:49You want to be able to count in any one of different ways
19:53So you could just look away from the table
19:54And then you can
19:55Look at it after all the cards are down
19:56And the first thing you probably look at is the blackjack
19:58Because they're getting picked up very quickly
20:00Right
20:00Because you get paid
20:02You get paid on that blackjack
20:03So it gets picked up
20:05And you started at 3
20:06So
20:08Now you're going 1
20:09You're thinking 1
20:10And you know you haven't counted anything else
20:12And now you just sort of try to group it
20:14Okay
20:15Yep, there's another one
20:16And that's the other thing you have to do
20:17You actually have to sometimes remind them to pay
20:18Because they will sometimes forget
20:20And strangely enough
20:21They tend to forget in the ways that hurt you
20:22And not in ways that help you
20:24Because if they do forget in the way that helps you
20:25The pit boss usually notices
20:28But rarely does a pit boss notice
20:29When it goes the other way
20:30He's always distracted to someone else
20:32That's just how it works
20:32It's not minus 1 with the blackjacks
20:35And then you just sort of look at them
20:36And you see
20:36Well this is neutral
20:37Right?
20:38And you just group
20:38You see
20:38Aha
20:39These cancel
20:40You know
20:41Positive and neutral and negative they cancel
20:44And these cancel
20:45And these cancel
20:46And these are neutral
20:48And that's how you think
20:49You kind of look for patterns
20:50You look for groups
20:51To quickly count the whole table
20:52And that's kind of another way of counting
20:54You want to be good at both of them
20:56And now you've arrived at minus 1
20:57And you play the rest of your hands
21:00Okay
21:01So you guys all standing?
21:03Yeah standing
21:05Okay
21:0717
21:09So it's still minus 1
21:10And now I'm going to play this hand
21:12Take that
21:16Okay
21:16When you're practicing counting
21:18You have to do payoffs
21:21Very few people realize that they practice counting
21:22Just dealing cards as fast as they can
21:24And they assume
21:24Well we know how to do payoffs
21:25Well guess what?
21:26The process of doing the payoffs correctly
21:28Distracts from the counting
21:29So you have to be able to
21:32Actually do all the payoffs
21:33And keep the counts
21:34And still know that it's minus 1
21:36While checking totals
21:38And when you actually start getting ready for playing
21:41Playing seriously
21:43You always want to have someone else
21:45Sort of what we call
21:46Do a check out
21:47To check you out before playing
21:50And that person
21:51Is going to deal to you
21:53And hopefully they can also know how to count a little bit
21:55So they can check your count
21:57If they don't
21:57You can check it yourself
21:58But their main job is to try to actually rip you off
22:01Is to try to pay you off wrong
22:02Is to try to do something wrong
22:05And you need to prove to yourself
22:06And presumably to them
22:07That you're able to be aware of the entire game
22:10No x
22:11Everything is happening
22:11While counting
22:13It's not enough just to count independently
22:14You have to do both
22:15And it actually does count fairly quickly
22:17Most people within a couple of months
22:19Of doing this
22:20Maybe 3 or 4 times a week
22:21For half an hour
22:23You can do it really effectively
22:25It doesn't take that super long
22:26You don't have to do it
22:27You know 8 hours a day
22:28In order to get good at it
22:32It's very quick
22:32I mean just a week
22:34You're going to be able to keep a count accurately
22:35Without playing
22:36And then a few months
22:37To actually play a count at the same time
22:38When you're first learning it
22:40And you pick up one deck of cards
22:41And you just go over
22:41You start at 0
22:42You've got to end at 0
22:44That's how you know that you're doing it right
22:46And you can make a mistake and still end up at 0 just randomly
22:48But if you end up at 0 time and time again you're doing it right
22:52The count that we're using is called the running count
22:55But the count that is directly correlated to your casino advantage is the true count
23:00What that means is that you take the running count
23:03And you divide by the number of decks still remaining in the shoe
23:07Because the running count is just the number of extra tens and aces
23:11Extra picture cards
23:13But you're not actually interested in the number
23:15The absolute number of extra tens and aces
23:17You're interested in the number of tens and aces per deck remaining
23:21Because that speaks of the richness of the high cards right
23:25You know what's your chance of getting an extra ten and aces on the very next card
23:28Depends on how many extra per deck
23:31How rich it is
23:32So that's why the division
23:34And in this case you take running 3
23:36And you divide it by about 5
23:38Because this is a 6-deck rule
23:39You see there's one deck here
23:40So there's 5 decks left
23:41A little you know
23:424 and 3 quarters whatever
23:45Well 3 divided by 5 is less than 1
23:48And it turns out that it's not enough
23:51Your best guess
23:52You know
23:52It looks like a little more in a deck here
23:54A deck in a quarter
23:55I'm going to say together with this card it's a deck and a half
23:57So I'm dividing by 4 and a half
23:59You can say 5 decks?
24:01You can just call those 5 decks
24:02It won't make a difference
24:03Dividing by 4 and a half divided by 5 is the same thing
24:05When you're near the cut card
24:07Dividing by 1 and a half and dividing by 2
24:08It's very different
24:10It turns out that how the other players play their hand
24:13Does not affect your advantage at all
24:15In long term maybe
24:16In any term
24:17In long term and short term at all
24:18It's an illusion
24:19It's one of the many many many counter intuitive illusions that you get
24:23It feels like it does
24:24Because you're sitting here
24:25And you know
24:25This guy like
24:26He hits his hard 17
24:28Because he's a knucklehead
24:29And he hits a hard 17
24:30You know
24:31And he busts it with a 6
24:33And you have a 15
24:34And you would have gotten that 6
24:36And now you bust a 15 with a 10
24:37And you're like
24:37Why did you do that?
24:39It doesn't matter
24:40Because he is just as likely to take out a card that helps you
24:42As a card that hurts you
24:44Well
24:44With any particular hand
24:45It's going to affect the result
24:46But how it affects the result
24:48You can't predict
24:48You do not
24:50Each card
24:50The cards are in here
24:51They don't exist
24:52They're like
24:52They're blank
24:53They're the back of the card
24:54You don't know what the next card is going to be
24:55Until the dealer turns it over
24:57It's equally likely to be
24:58Any of the cards that are in there
25:00Right?
25:01So when a person does the wrong play
25:04They're
25:04They're not hurting you
25:05There's no
25:05His making the right of the wrong play
25:07Affects his results
25:08They don't affect your results
25:09Your results are independent of his results
25:11It affects it as much as the count does
25:12So
25:12If
25:13When he pulls out cards
25:14The count changes
25:15And if the count goes
25:17Up
25:17You know
25:18Maybe you'll start splitting
25:19If it goes down you won't
25:20But
25:21It only affects
25:22It based on the fact that
25:23That one card is no longer in a shoe
25:27So now
25:28What
25:29See the count is 13
25:30And the total is 14
25:32So that's
25:33You really gotta keep it separate in your head
25:34Count is 13
25:35Count is 13
25:35You know
25:37Too many
25:37Count is 13
25:4011
25:40Doubling down
25:42Count is 14
25:4412
25:4618
25:47Count is 15
25:51Too many
25:52Count is 14
25:5312
25:55Too many
25:55Count is 14
25:5712
25:57Right
25:59And the count is 12
26:02And so
26:02Loses
26:04Everybody loses
26:05Which is you know
26:08What happens most of the time
26:09When the count rises
26:10You tend to lose
26:12Right
26:12Because
26:13Why is the count rising?
26:14It's because little cards are coming out
26:15Little cards help you deal more than the player
26:17But how much?
26:18Not by that much
26:18You don't lose every time
26:19But you might lose two thirds of the time when the count is rising
26:22And win two thirds of the time when the count is falling
26:25You see
26:26Why do you bet when the count is high?
26:28Because you expect it to start falling
26:30And that's when you make money
26:31When it's falling
26:32Not when it's rising
26:33It's an important distinction
26:38It turns out
26:39That in terms of percent
26:42Your advantage
26:43Which is originally
26:44Let's say half a percent
26:45In favor of the casino
26:46With perfect basic strategy
26:48It varies
26:49By half a percent
26:51With each true count
26:53So for every extra
26:5410 OAs per deck
26:56For every extra true count
26:57The player's advantage improves by half a percent
27:01It's very close to a linear function
27:06When the true is zero
27:09The casino advantage is half a percent
27:12When the true is one
27:13It's a break even game
27:14When the true is two
27:15The player has half a percent
27:17When the true is three
27:18The player has a percent
27:19So how do you convert from true?
27:21Well first you have to subtract the offset
27:23The original casino advantage
27:27Because the casino advantage is half a percent
27:31We're gonna play it as a true minus one game
27:33What does that mean?
27:34It means that you have to subtract one from the true
27:36To get to your actual advantage
27:37Because the true
27:38The one true
27:39Which is half a percent
27:40In terms of advantages
27:41Is what the casino starts with
27:44So until you get to a true plus one
27:46You're playing a negative game
27:47A true plus one you just break even
27:50So that's why you subtract one from your true
27:53And then you bet based on what's left
27:57And what do you bet?
27:58You bet units
27:58You have to calculate a betting unit
28:01Your betting unit depends on your bankroll
28:05And it's not related directly to the table minimum
28:08For instance
28:08So the amount that you were betting up to now
28:10Is the table minimum
28:11Or your minimum
28:12It's
28:12The less it is
28:13The more money you're gonna make
28:15Sometimes you have to bet more than the minimum
28:17Because of camouflage
28:17Because you don't want to
28:18Very bet too high
28:19You might have reasons why you bet more
28:20But it's as little as you can get away with
28:25Your unit
28:26Is simply a fraction of your total bankroll
28:30That's how much you bet per true
28:31After subtracting the offset
28:34Okay
28:35So it's theoretically the units
28:37Is the amount of money that you want to risk
28:38For each half a percent advantage that you have
28:43And the absolute theoretical maximum on that would be
28:46About half a percent
28:49Or one two hundredths of your bankroll
28:51So
28:51You know
28:52The typical bankroll for
28:54I think
28:54Students of the seminar tends to be
28:56On the order of
28:56Fifty thousand dollars
28:58Sometimes twenty thousand dollars
28:59For some people it's a few hundred thousand dollars
29:02But let's say you have a
29:03Fifty thousand dollar bankroll
29:07Well
29:08Just divide
29:08You know
29:10Fifty
29:11Divided by
29:12A hundred
29:13Right
29:16Five hundred dollars
29:17And then divided by
29:19To be pretty conservative
29:20Another five
29:21So you can use a hundred dollar unit
29:23You know
29:23That would be very conservative
29:25You could
29:26The most aggressive unit you would use
29:27With a fifty thousand dollar bankroll
29:29Would be about a two hundred dollar unit
29:31And that's about the range
29:32You're not going to go outside of those numbers
29:35You pick a unit before you start playing
29:37You think about your bankroll
29:38You divide by
29:40By four hundred by five hundred
29:41You know
29:42By something in that range
29:43And
29:44And that's
29:45And you stick with it
29:45And the only time you change your unit
29:47Is if you have a very large swing
29:49Or if you're playing on a team with someone else
29:51And maybe your teammates are playing in a different city
29:53But they're calling the phone
29:54And they say
29:55You know
29:55I just had a huge loss
29:56And now our bankroll is not fifty thousand
29:58Our bankroll is now only thirty thousand
30:00Because I lost everything I had with me
30:01You know
30:02And then you do have to change your unit then
30:04But usually you only change your unit in between trips
30:07Except you know
30:08Every once in a while
30:09You have such a large swing
30:10That you need to change your unit in the middle of a trip
30:12But certainly not in the middle of a trip
30:15Because there's
30:15It would be too many things to keep in your head
30:17To be changing units
30:18So
30:19So your unit is a fixed number
30:20And let's say it's going to be a hundred dollars to true
30:23Well
30:24How do you calculate
30:25How much to bet?
30:26The true is three
30:27Because it's twelve divided by four
30:28So it's three
30:29You subtract one for the offset
30:31To make up for the original casino advantage
30:33So now
30:34The true after the offset is two
30:37And you just multiply that by a unit
30:39Two hundred dollars
30:40You know
30:41A hundred dollar unit times two is two hundred dollars
30:42That's the right bet
30:45On one hand
30:45And if you want to play two hands
30:47You bet a little bit less than each one
30:48But
30:51That's how you calculate it
30:52Ideally
30:52Your minimum
30:53Is not much more than your unit
30:56Okay
30:56It could be a little more than a unit
30:58Sometimes
30:59You prefer the minimum to be much less than your unit
31:01You prefer
31:02You know
31:02If you have a twenty dollar unit
31:03You really want like a ten dollar minimum
31:05Or five dollar minimum
31:06So to calculate the offset for a particular set of rules
31:09Look up the rules on the website
31:11It'll give you a percentage
31:13Double that percentage to convert to trues
31:15And add a half a true for your error rate
31:18And that's how with good rules
31:19You get a true minus one game
31:20Because it's a quarter of a percent
31:22Double it to get to trues
31:23It's half a true
31:24Add the half a true error rate
31:27And you get two minus one
31:28You get a full true offset
31:31So with good rules
31:32You play two minus one
31:33With bad rules
31:33You play two minus one and a half
31:36Pretty much
31:37That's the range
31:38So anyway
31:38So that's how you calculate your offset
31:40And you do
31:41Just like your unit
31:42You do that ahead of time
31:43You hopefully know what the rules are
31:44And when you come in
31:45When you sit down
31:46You know your unit
31:47Hundreds are true
31:47You know your offset is minus one
31:49So you're playing this
31:50Hundreds to true minus one game
31:51True game
31:52That's what we call the game that you're playing
31:54That's how you can describe it to a computer
31:56Later on to try to figure out how much it's worth
31:58So I think it's good to know
32:00What the optimal bet is
32:01And then if you're not going to be accurate
32:02You know maybe
32:03You're not going to be exactly accurate anyway
32:05But at least you're starting out with the optimal amount
32:07And then you make some error from there
32:09But if you start off being off by a hundred dollars
32:11And then you make another error of a hundred dollars
32:13Because you know
32:14You thought it was two decks here
32:16But it's actually two and a half
32:17You know
32:18You might have a weaker game
32:21So we found it's better to actually do the offset
32:24Multiply by the unit
32:25But use a high-low count
32:26On the other hand
32:27You're using more advanced count
32:28So you're probably occupying more of your mind
32:31With the counting
32:32And maybe you have less mental energy to do the offset
32:35And we find that it's better to do the offset
32:39You might be playing it really without numbers variation
32:42Meaning the numbers
32:44When I say numbers variation
32:45I specifically mean
32:46Changing your basic strategy based on the count
32:48To get that extra 15-20% advantage
32:51Over just varying a bet
32:53There is one numbers play
32:55That you do have to make immediately
32:57And you can't wait until you're good
32:59Because it's a much bigger effect on your advantage
33:01And that is the insurance decision
33:03Okay
33:04You should not take insurance off the top
33:07But if the true count reaches 3
33:10You have to take insurance
33:13And it's actually a very costly mistake
33:15Not to take it at a true above 3
33:19Okay
33:20So the true count is 3 or higher
33:223 or higher
33:23You have to take insurance
33:24And that's your first numbers variation, right?
33:28That's the most important one
33:30And then when you start learning them
33:32You just start adding a few at a time
33:35You don't memorize the whole chart
33:36You know, you might look at like the little numbers
33:38The 1, 2, 3
33:40You know, numbers up with 3
33:41Are the ones you sort of add first
33:44Because those counts happen pretty often
33:46So you look at the 8 against the 5 and the 6
33:49And you see that you can start doubling
33:51With a true count of 2 and 3 respectively
33:54So
33:54You kind of keep it at a 9
33:55And when you get the 8
33:56You know, you go ahead and double
33:57Before you've learned a lot of the numbers
34:01You know, there's a few surrender numbers
34:02That are important too
34:03If you have a game of surrender
34:06And you have a true 3
34:07You know, you're going to surrender 15 against 9
34:09And an ace
34:10You're going to surrender 14 against a 10
34:16Okay, let's go over that again
34:17It's a pretty important chart
34:19Your total is on the left
34:21Dealer's total is on the top
34:22And the numbers in the middle of the chart
34:25The number is the true count above which
34:28You make a strategy variation
34:31So you play basic up to that point
34:34Above that you vary
34:35The true of 8 you start surrendering
34:37That's how you read the chart
34:39This is the true count at which you start doing the variation
34:41Okay
34:42What the variation is?
34:43Well, on the surrender numbers
34:44The variation is to start surrendering
34:46So notice that the 16 against the 10 is a negative 1
34:49Meaning when the true count is above a negative 1
34:51You start surrendering
34:52Because basic is to surrender
34:54Because the basic is 0
34:55Which is above negative 1
34:56So you surrender
35:01Let's just play it out
35:02They said it was 13 I believe
35:04So we won't provide split yet
35:067 we do split
35:0917
35:1017
35:10And the count is 12
35:1213
35:12And the count is 13
35:14And you're going to stand that
35:15Of course against the 6
35:16You're going to stand that
35:17You're going to stand that
35:19You're going to stand that
35:20The other has 16
35:21The count is 12
35:22The other has 16
35:23The count is 12
35:23The other has the count is 11
35:25So everybody's gonna have
35:31They might play it like that
35:40Now it probably is 2 and a half
35:43There was 3 last time we played sort of full round here
35:4611 over 2 and a half is more than 4
35:48So you're going to play more than 3 units
35:50You always subtract 1
35:51So a little more than $300 shield
35:53So now just keep counting
35:54It was 11
35:57And yeah let's try counting the way you were suggesting
36:01These kind of cancel out
36:04These all cancel
36:05And this is kind of the one that's left in my mind
36:07Like there's a neutral egg norm
36:09Cancel, cancel, this all canceled
36:11And this canceled
36:13See?
36:141, 2, 3, 4
36:15And so it's now 10
36:17It drops 1
36:18Right
36:19It counts 10
36:21Alternatively I could have just very quickly went
36:2311, 12, 11, 10, 9, 10, 9, 9, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10
36:32And I could have arrived at the same number
36:34Otherwise if you get very good at this
36:36You can count no matter how fast it is
36:38Absolutely you can count
36:39And in fact I prefer when I do it very fast
36:42Yes
36:42It's easier to count for me
36:43Because I get it out of the way
36:45Like they deal around and it's done
36:47And I have the number
36:47I don't have to go look
36:48And then I can do the cancellation
36:49That's it
36:50Sometimes when I go very slowly
36:51You're likely to forget the count in the middle
36:53You know
36:55So you should be able to be independent
36:58Of how exactly they deal
36:59It's too much of a handicap
37:00To have to look for the dealer deals
37:01Right
37:02Because when you start talking about advanced games
37:04Very soon
37:05You'll see that we're going to be selecting dealers
37:07On a bunch of other criteria
37:09Other than just how fast the deal
37:11So it's 10
37:1317
37:1614
37:184
37:1914
37:219
37:2219
37:2210
37:2310
37:23These are good
37:25And a 6
37:2714
37:27Still 10
37:2818
37:28It's 11
37:3114
37:32It's 12
37:3321
37:35Hopefully you know that it's 12 right now
37:37I mean it's very easy to get confused and think that it's maybe 14
37:39Maybe 14
37:40Maybe 14
37:40But it's 12
37:42And you lost
37:4214
37:44It's 12
37:4615
37:4615
37:4622
37:5123
37:5322
38:0524
38:0624
38:0723
38:1124
38:12your wife you know it could be just a group of one person but hopefully it's a bigger group than
38:16that someone actually checks you every time to see how many mistakes do you make do you make you
38:22know too many you do make the right amount the acceptable amount of mistakes and then maybe
38:26they watch in a casino and there's a lot of procedures that professionalize your play
38:31because the professional blackjack player is simply one who trusts the simulations it's one
38:35who knows at the end of the day the only thing that makes on professional is being able to say
38:39with certainty what your expectation was and what standard deviation was over the previous so many
38:44years of play and when you can say that then you could in fact make the conclusion that no this
38:48is
38:48impossible I can't be down right now the casino is cheating something is wrong you can make that
38:52conclusion or in the case of a team of people like we had the conclusion may have been that you
38:58know
38:58this person is ripping us off he's not he's lying to us he's actually stealing this money and not
39:01losing you know that that's something that has occurred unfortunately very rarely but it has
39:06occurred and a professional player with no exceptions keeps records of all his action if you're not
39:13keeping your records there's no way that you're professional because you never know whether you're
39:16winning or losing or whether you're lucky or good so it means that every time you play you at least
39:22write down how much you won how much you lost and try to guess what your expectation was you can
39:29run
39:29casino verite you can try to estimate the value of the game what we were very precise about it we
39:35actually wrote down like how many exact shoes we played how many other players were at the table
39:38when the dealer show you know how deep the cut cut was we wrote down like everything we went to
39:42the
39:42bathroom every half an hour wrote down every single factor we could plug it into a simulator and got very
39:48exact result for expectation of standard deviation you don't have to do that but you should have an
39:53estimate you should have an approximate value for what you think you expect to have made as you
40:00start betting more you're gonna start getting attention okay the movie when you're betting even
40:05a hundred dollar unit you usually don't get any attention in the bigger casinos here but if you have
40:09a four hundred dollar unit you're gonna get a lot it's just it's a the level where the attention begins
40:14and so
40:15you're gonna have to get very good at having cover logic you know especially a certain place like
40:22splitting tents is this kind of a it's a little bit of a giveaway for some casinos know that who
40:27splits
40:27tents well terrible players with tents and card counters with tents and nobody in the middle splits
40:32tents so if you're gonna split you should split that sometimes you know it's not a common play it
40:37doesn't happen very often but when it happens it's a very powerful play and you you miss a lot you
40:42lose out on a lot of money by not splitting them because you're afraid that you'll get labeled as a
40:45character so what do you do you convince them that you're the terrible player but why aren't you
40:50playing terribly all the time well you need some logic because right now you know there's a full moon
40:56and and the cocktail waiter says drop that drink and therefore you have you know you have to have
41:00some reason or maybe it's because you lost three hands in a row or whatever just you have to sort
41:05of verbalize and explain your logic so that you blend in and look like the kind of guy who every
41:11once in a while does a crazy play for some some crazy reason and they buy it it doesn't really
41:15matter
41:15what the reason is they're used to having people justify their actions and in general camouflage play is not
41:21that effectively how you act matters much more than what you do the people who work for casinos tend to
41:28think in terms of stereotypes okay so if they just label you as they have to sort of once you
41:36start
41:36betting when you're betting small just keep your mouth shut and play quiet they won't notice you when
41:41you're betting big that's not an option they're gonna notice you they're gonna say oh so where are you
41:45staying would you like a suite you know they're gonna know you they're gonna want your name you know you
41:49can't not give them your name and you're the biggest player in the casino that's just not gonna fly so
41:55so you therefore you know it turns out that if you just convince them of a story if you blend
42:06into
42:06some image that they have they're gonna love you and you're not gonna watch you very few of them know
42:11how to count very few of these tables have real software set up they can actually check everything
42:16it's just somehow there yet typically if they're suspicious they're gonna find out what you're up
42:22to no matter what no matter how much you can make an incorrect play it won't help you if one
42:27if they're
42:27really suspicious and they think that you're a card counter they're gonna kick you out and you should
42:32just leave you've screwed up already you already lost you've got to be someone in their minds that's an
42:39innocuous gambler they gotta love you you gotta think that you're just another guy who's gonna lose all
42:44his money and how do you do that you you have a story you have an act you you know
42:50you have to sort
42:51of let them know why you're in a casino i was usually an arms dealer you know this is like
42:56so you know
42:56falling apart mid 90s and i was this young guy that i always had like several ladies on both sides
43:03you
43:03know and i had a certain image and i played to the image it's so a lot of them just
43:08wouldn't they
43:09wouldn't look at my play i did some pretty blatant things but like they didn't i mean eventually
43:14they did eventually they did but that's okay you know she went enough get kicked out i find that
43:20you're gonna change my world you're gonna heal my world you're gonna feel my world and make it all a
43:33little better and every song is true and every tongue speaks kind and every soul brings good to slice a
43:48bigger
43:48peace of mind
43:49you suppose there's nothing much a meager man can do bear his hairy chest and hold his morning breath
43:58sting his thumbs into the screws curse the dusty bell the busterers in riot gear while he bellows like
44:06a cranky bowl to anyone here you're gonna change my world you're gonna raise that cane
44:22you
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